In machines, such as copiers or printers, paper or other print receiving material is held in a paper bin and fed one sheet at a time into the machine. Frequently, paper cassettes are used which may hold, for example, a stack of 25 or 50 sheets. To reload a cassette, the cassette is usually removed from the machine, a stack of paper is placed into the cassette and the cassette is returned to the machine. Normally the stack of paper is placed in the cassette on a tray which is spring-biased upwardly so that the top sheet on the tray contacts paper feed rolls positioned above the cassette. In arrangements of this kind, there is danger of a paper jam if the leading edge of the top sheet turns down into a space between the stack and the front edge of the cassette bin. This type of jam occurs most frequently during feeding of the last few sheets of a stack since the spring-biased tray has pivoted upwardly at a greater angle than when the stack is full. That greater angle occurs since the rear of the tray pivots around a point at the rear edge of the cassette bin. Thus the gap between the leading edge of the paper and the front edge of the bin is greater when the bottom few sheets are being fed. In the prior art, this problem was solved by the provision of corner separators which were small strips, usually made of plastic, placed diagonally across each of the front corners of the cassette. In that manner, as the top sheet was fed, a bubble would be placed into the sheet causing the sheet eventually to snap forward out of the corner separators and across the gap between the tray and the front edge of the cassette bin. Unfortunately, the corner separators occasionally placed a bend in the front edge of the paper and, in electrophotographic machines, that frequently caused paper jams, particularly at the fusing station.
Therefore, it is the major object of this invention to provide a cassette for feeding paper in which there is no need to use corner separators to prevent paper jams from occurring as sheets are fed from the cassette into the machine.